The premise: A New York-based writer who’s engaged to an economics teacher at Columbia encounters cultural chaos when she returns to her native Jordan for a pre-wedding visit. Her divorced mother is Christian, her fiancé is Muslim and her American father has remarried a young Indian woman who struggles to win his family’s approval.

Directed by: Cherien Dabis

Length: 1 hour, 39 minutes

Rated: R for language. In English and Arabic with English subtitles.

BEN KENIGSBERG, NEW YORK TIMES:

★
★ The hand-wringing and revelations are familiar from many wedding movies, but “May in the Summer” gains added potency from its cross-cultural tensions and the drama the characters face in reconciling tradition with modern life. Two sisters debate who speaks worse Arabic; the mother doesn’t want May marrying a Muslim, even a secular one. ... The film falls somewhere between slight and satisfying in its ultimate irresolution.